


Off Tick

by ezlebe



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Timers, Frottage, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:27:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26017273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ezlebe/pseuds/ezlebe
Summary: Richie ignores the TiMER jingle, at first, far more interested in retweeting a mediocre meme of his character from Starlet than in a mundane meet-cute at the park. He looks around when he realizes there’s been no shocked laughs or awkward congratulations, then drops his head again with a shrug, scrolling down another few tweets, only to catch movement where it has no business being.He turns his hand with mounting dread to confirm the noise came fromhisTiMER, suddenly full of new numbers counting down across his wrist, and suffers a wash of white noise between his ears. He's slumping onto a bench before he knows it, rubbing at his forehead with the heel of his hand and staring at the tarmac path while he tries to suppress a wave of nausea; it’s not quite so bad as the call from Mike, but man, it is close.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 34
Kudos: 242





	Off Tick

Richie ignores the TiMER jingle, at first, far more interested in retweeting a mediocre meme of his character from Starlet than in a mundane meet-cute at the park. He looks around when he realizes there’s been no shocked laughs or awkward congratulations, then drops his head again with a shrug, scrolling down another few tweets, only to catch movement where it has no business being. 

He turns his hand with mounting dread to confirm the noise came from _his_ TiMER, suddenly full of new numbers counting down across his wrist, and suffers a wash of white noise between his ears. He's slumping onto a bench before he knows it, rubbing at his forehead with the heel of his hand and staring at the tarmac path while he tries to suppress a wave of nausea; it’s not quite so bad as the call from Mike, but man, it is close.

Richie rolls his lips hard together, biting down, then shakes his head while pulling up his messages. He starts typing out a text to Eddie, desperate hope driving him more than any real belief; he has a distinct memory of Eddie, both fourteen and forty, talking about the disgusting lack of sanitation at TiMER stores, not to mention he’s fucking _twenty-five hundred_ miles away.

<<’Whatcha doin’?’10:14AM

It only takes seconds for Eddie to start to answer, oscillating ellipses bumping up Richie’s message, despite the week day. It’s not that he usually takes _forever_ to answer, but he’s got a boring job with boring meetings, and usually it takes at least a few minutes to get a response, but maybe he’s taking a late lunch.

Optimistically, at a mall.

 _‘Finishing up divorce.’ 10:15AM_>>

 _‘Call you when out.’_ >>

Richie stares at the texts, reaching up with his offending arm to scratch at the back of his neck. He exhales a breath that becomes a laugh, tight and humorless, then bends over his knees with a deep breath at another godawful roll of his stomach. He drops the phone to his side with a thunk on the metal bench, then scratches his hand up in his hair while peeking at the offending TiMER from the corner of his eye.

It’s definitely all zeroes in the day section – _fuck_. Okay, so he might not even get a whole twenty-four hours to come to terms with this shit. It’s going to go off probably tonight, likely while he’s still at the bar mingling after his new show, and he’s going to have to pretend to be happy about it.

He prays to any fuck who’ll listen that his soul mate isn’t one of the twenty-somethings who’ve just gotten into his comedy now he came out. It would suck for both of them, destiny or not – what could he even say? Will he have to just be like: hey, I’m over forty, so we have nothing in common, sorry about that – oh yeah, I should _probably_ mention I’ve been in love with this anxious little gremlin for the last forever, so I’m not sure I _can_ love you. Isn’t that a bummer?

Yeah, sounds like a fantastic way to start a relationship.

Richie exhales until his lungs feel empty, a little painful, then forces himself out of the bench while grabbing his phone. He scowls at the sidewalk as he makes his way back to his house, feeling a thousand times less motivated than when he left, which is the opposite of what he wanted – he was supposed to get inspired, or _something_ , now he just wants to sit in a dark room and stare at a wall.

He sighs and turns his phone over while pushing up his glasses, opening the screen to do the only thing he can in this situation: bother the most romantic person he knows into assessing the situation, so he doesn’t have to engage in any critical self-reflection.

“Hey, Rich!” Ben greets, sounding surprised, but not unpleasantly, a smile in his voice. “How’s the west coast?”

“Still superior to the Midwest,” Richie says, pulling at a string on his shirt while sinking into his oversize sofa; it’s the perfect size for napping after a breakdown, not that he would know from experience. “Are you busy laying down ink for bougie strip malls?”

“Uh, no,” Ben says, laughing politely at the joke. “Not right now.”

Richie nods, entirely to himself. “Is Bev there?”

Ben goes quiet for a beat, then makes an uncomfortable noise. “No?”

“Okay, I need you to keep a secret for like… a day,” Richie says, lowering his voice slightly, feeling a little ashamed, but it’s not long and Bev would… She’ll get it. He’s positive there’s a lot she trusts to talk about with Ben Hanscom and no one else. “Can you do that?”

Ben hems and haws, as reluctant as he can be without outright denying the request. “Richie, is she going to ask?”

“No,” Richie says, leaning back into the sofa, only to remember that his TiMER had gone off in public. He doesn’t think anyone took a picture or anything, though, doesn’t remember anyone even looking over, but he’d been kind of busy trying not to throw up. “I don’t think so? Fuck, I hope not.”

“Okay, but if she asks about whatever it is, I – ” Ben sighs, fiddling with something metallic on his end of the phone. “I’ll probably have to say something.”

“I’ll allow it,” Richie says, pushing up his glasses and glancing to the source of today’s problem blinking from his wrist. “So. My TiMER went off.”

Ben doesn’t say anything for a worryingly long time. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Richie says, looking away and scrubbing his hand through his hair. “Kind of short notice, too. Tomorrow – or tonight, if it happens at my show. I don’t fucking know.”

“Right, yeah… wow,” Ben says, clearing his throat, a creak coming from somewhere on his end. “Why are, uh – I mean I love you, Richie, but why are you telling _me_?”

Richie rolls his eyes hard, gesturing upward at the judgmental reflection of himself in the blank television. “Because back in the day, we were… sort of buddies, about this,” he says, awkwardly talking around the subject while feeling his throat threaten to close up in unease; over twenty years and somehow he just can’t get over it. “We’ve never talked about it, but I know you knew! It gave me hives, but I know you fucking knew – you made a lot of references to the fucking Kissing Bridge at terrifying times.”

“Oh, this is about – yeah,” Ben says, then proceeds to hum a low, apologetic mumble. “Sorry. That was… not great of me.”

“It’s cool, it’s whatever,” Richie says, though it really isn’t, because it had been in front of Eddie _way_ more often than not. “I mean, obviously, you got your Christmas tree, but I – I was cool just watching mine grow.”

Ben takes a breath, then holds it for a palpable beat. “What?”

Richie presses the speaker button, setting the phone on the sofa arm while slumping into the cushions. “Because we pined! It’s a metaphor, Benji.”

“Oh,” Ben intones, then chuckles under his breath. “I like it.”

Richie repeats that silently to himself with a slight sneer, gesturing at his reflection again before rolling his eyes and letting himself slump into the cushion. “Anyway, what do I do? Like if this was you; if the universe was like: ‘hey, Handsome, here’s your soul mate, disregard how you’ve put all your lo – all your _everything_ into Bev for thirty years, it’s actually this guy – _girl.’_ What would you do?”

“I don’t know, I think I – ”

“Because, simultaneously, you just found out that – that _you’re_ not _Bev’s_ soul mate,” Richie interrupts, hearing his voice pitch high while his chest gets tight, despite wanting to keep this whole conversation neutral and totally casual, because he can’t help become a total hopeless sucker when it comes to Eddie. “And you were perfectly fine never knowing it one way or the other.”

“… _Shit_ , Richie, I – ” Ben is a fucking sigh factory today, followed by some kind of pen audibly clinking onto a glass surface. “And it’s tomorrow?”

Richie glares at the vague impression of a cobweb drifting on his stupidly high ceiling. “Yup.”

“You could give them a chance? Rather than just hating them right away,” Ben says, unbelievably deciding to be totally reasonable. “They could be in the exact same place as you.”

“You’re such a good guy, Handsome,” Richie says, realizing with a scowl that he should’ve called Stan; he knows Stan would have said the exact same thing, but way less kind, which is easier for Richie to argue down. “But I’m an asshole and I don’t even know why I _should_.”

“Maybe you won’t have to,” Ben says, admirably switching tracks without arguing it any further, though he doesn’t exactly assure Richie that he _isn’t_ an asshole, either, so it’s probably still a Hanscom win. “Plenty of soul mates are platonic – I know that might not make you feel any better, but I’ve read it can be just as fulfilling – ”

Richie startles when the phone starts to ring in the middle of Ben’s Hallmark advice, peeking over to look at the name across the top. “Shit, Eddie’s calling.”

“Are you going to tell him?” Ben asks, his voice lilting up at the end in a signal that he’s asking more in hope than any actual curiosity.

“Absolutely not!” Richie says merrily, hanging up on Ben to answer Eddie before he can get himself another aggravated voicemail to save. He clears his throat while the call connects, then starts talking as soon as he hears the hint of breath on the line. “So you finally free from the legal blood suckers?”

Eddie immediately scoffs, but it doesn’t have the heaviness of actual irritation. “Hey, Richie, it’s Eddie – and _yes_ , thank fuck.”

“So were you finishing, as in, it’s a done deal?” Richie asks, with maybe less enthusiasm than the last time he asked, but he doubts Eddie is going to notice it.

“She had some really stupid stipulations, but,” Eddie takes a breath, then exhales, voice oscillating slightly while he probably nods on the other end of the line. “But it worked out really well. She finally signed the papers.”

Richie catches sight of the cobweb again, blowing hard and pretending he can see it move. “Congratulations in order?”

“Yeah!” Eddie exclaims, suddenly a little shrill and so absolutely thrilled that Richie grins back into the phone, briefly forgetting the turmoil under his own sternum. “Yeah, definitely.”

Richie rubs at his wrist, looking down to stare hard at the numbers. “Eddie Spaghetti, free noodle.”

“Shut up,” Eddie says, briefly scolding before his tone picks back up into that blatant cheer. “Still have some other legal shit to get through, but – close, yeah. A week or two.”

A week, Eddie says, while the numbers on Richie’s wrist say tomorrow. He swallows hard, turning his wrist over, and tries to ignore how his chest feels like it might squeeze his heart to a stop.

“Richie?” Eddie says, a few seconds later, a gentle, echo-y roar of a street behind him that quickly disappears with a smooth whir of the window. “You okay?”

“Yeah, you know, I’m… just bored, I guess,” Richie attempts a deep breath, rubbing at his forehead for a few seconds and forcefully pushing away all his TiMER issues. It’s not like Eddie really has anything to do with it; that part is all in his stupid fucking head. “I got up like early – ”

“Actual early or like eight?”

It _had_ been eight, but – “Actual early!”

“Sure, Rich,” Eddie says, huffing with that familiar unambiguous disbelief.

“I was trying to write,” Richie says, remembering the blessed, ignorant hours of the morning, before the universe decided to throw him another curveball to the nads. “I went out for a walk and got some tea, filling myself with inspiration and tapioca. I’m a real creative.”

“ _Milk_ tea, Richie? You drank pure – What the fuck!?” Eddie abruptly snaps, the scolding lilt of his voice neatly and abruptly rising into pure fury. “Do you even have _a license_ , you blind motherfucker?! You can’t push _me_ out of the fucking lane!”

“I needed energy, it was early,” Richie says, playing hurt, pressing a hand to his heart for no one but himself.

“Fucking hell, Rich,” Eddie says, taking a breath and dropping swiftly back into taunting Richie. “Are all your teeth implants?”

Richie makes a point to gasp loud and appalled into the receiver. “Hey! My father would be proud of how much I’ve given to the dental industry.”

Eddie’s laugh echoes through the phone, pitchy and delighted, and it is honestly probably Richie’s favorite noise. He wants to record it and make it his fucking text alert; he wants to carry it around, a pocketed dopamine hit better than anything else he’s ever tried.

“Hey, you know I could – ” Richie clears his throat, because maybe he can make this work. If he _has_ to meet his soul mate, at least he’ll be able run off for the weekend with a good excuse and maybe never come back to LA. He can just stay with Eddie and pretend he never met shit. “I could help you celebrate?”

Eddie goes quiet for a beat, his laughter fading into bemusement. “What?”

Richie scratches at the back of his neck, then starts tugging at the smaller, more sensitive hairs at the base of his scalp. “I don’t have shit going on this weekend – just a little show tonight, then I could fly out to New York and we could paint the town. I could even get – ”

“No, you can’t,” Eddie interrupts, voice pitching and abruptly harried, taking a few loud breaths before awkwardly breaking the silence that Richie allows to fester in disappointment. “I mean, no, that’s not necessary, Rich.”

“Alright, but you remember I offered!” Richie says, putting on a half-hearted Voice that is mostly just his mom’s exaggerated Mainer accent. “Don’t say I neve’ wanted to do nothing for ye’.”

“I wouldn’t, Rich,” Eddie says, strangely soft, falling quiet for a beat, then startling Richie with a scoff that washes static down the receiver. “Was that your mom?”

“Maybe,” Richie admits, a swell of childish pride pushing away his melancholy at the fact Eddie actually recognized his Voice. “If you’re about to ask for her number, _no_.”

“I’m already friends with her on Facebook,” Eddie says, tone going breezy, followed by the unmistakable click-clack of a blinker in the background. “Just waiting for her to accept the request to change our relationship status.”

Richie laughs loud, leaning into the high arm of the sofa and pretending, just for a second, it’s more than suede and stuffing. “Fuck you, you’re not my _real_ daddy.”

Eddie squeaks out a startled, choking little snicker that Richie’s not sure he’s ever heard before, but finds incredible.

* * *

Richie arrives on edge for his set and doesn’t feel any better throughout the night, knowing the way he’s avoiding the direct eye of half the crowd in such a small venue is obvious. He gets through it best he can, chuckling at his own jokes and bolstered some by the sound of laughter, but the moment he gets off the stage, the effect fades and he can feel Steve’s assessing him from where he’s perched in the back at the bar. It’s not the sort of assessing of his performance, his continued talent, but of his composure, which is a thousand times worse.

He toys with the idea of going backstage and hiding, but that’s never worked before and he doubts it will tonight. The worst part about Steve is that, on the surface, he acts like the sort of guy who’s nervous and compliant, indulging weird quirks while letting his clients get away with whatever, but behind his eyes there’s sometimes this steely edge of no bullshit peeking through that separates him from the rest of the fakery.

Steve doesn’t mince words, gesturing at Richie a pair of fingers and a too-neutral expression. “If you started doing something… hard, you have to tell me now.”

“What?” Richie asks, pausing with one hand out getting on his stool.

Steve rolls his eyes, widening them at the ground, then looks back up and leans forward to tug at Richie’s long sleeve.

“Oh,” Richie intones, then clicks his tongue while pulling at the sleeve to show off the countdown. He has barely an hour left until the next jingle is due to go off, signaling that he’s going to meet his _soul mate_ sometime over the next twenty-four hours.

“Shit, when – _tomorrow_?” Steve says, mouth twisting into a baffled grimace while his brows go up his forehead. “That’s fucking weird.”

“Or tonight,” Richie says blandly, gesturing with his glass at the rest of the bar, then the greater part of the club behind them.

“You don’t want to meet them?” Steve says, visibly dumbfounded, but he would be – his TiMER went off when he was twenty-three and proceeded into the sort of love story that’s been produced in thirty different flavors of vanilla by the Hallmark Channel.

“Not really, dude,” Richie says, offering a thoroughly faked, pressed mouth smile. “I’m fucking forty-one, professionally grasping at relevancy, and sometimes forget that I’m not still closeted. It’s going to be a nightmare.”

Steve tips his head, quiet for a beat, then shrugs with one shoulder. “I mean, sometimes you can be kind of funny.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Richie says, emphasizing the sentiment with a middle finger. “What’s Kona up to tonight?”

“Looking at property,” Steve says, shrugging a little while offering a wry smile. “Wine country. We might end up with some land.”

“Are you going to become that guy?” Richie asks, looking Steve up and down, then waving in the vague direction of Sacramento with his hand. “Out in the middle of nowhere growing some wines.”

“No,” Steve says, firm, shaking his head at the same time he gestures flatly at the bar. “I told them I didn’t want to do anything outside.”

Richie snorts loudly, reaching for his glass after the bartender sets it down in front of him. “Weed, then – that’s grown inside.”

Steve rolls his eyes, lifting his own glass, only to freeze while staring into it. “Shit,” he exhales, then puts the glass down to grab for his phone from his jacket pocket. “ _Shit_. Kona never actually said wine.”

Richie sits back against the bar, watching Steve straighten his tie while sticking the phone up to his ear.

“Heya, babe,” Steve says, just as Kona starts talking, a smile stretching across his face to stay; _gross_. “I was just – Yeah, he’s here, but I wanted to confirm what kind of land you were looking at?”

Kona answers on the other end, their voice not quite intelligible, but tone definitely a little teasing.

“No, no, I know where it is,” Steve says, glaring for a beat at Richie before turning his head with a quick sip from his glass. “But for _what_?”

The teasing continues, drawing out into some sort of lengthy lecture that makes Steve roll his eyes to the ceiling of the bar. “Crops? Babe,” Steve says, tapping at the edge of his phone with a pair of fingers. “What kind of crops – is this weed? Are we going to grow _weed_?”

The confirmation is unmistakable.

“I thought it was for wine!”

Kona’s bright laugh is distinct on the other end of the line.

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve mutters, glancing to Richie for a beat, then rolling his eyes with a pressed smile. “Okay, yeah – yes, I love you. Call you when Tozier isn’t mocking me from a foot away.” He hangs up and slumps down onto his hands on the bar for a few seconds, then exhales deeply while sitting up and looking Richie straight in the eye. “This is what you have to look forward to.”

“Honestly, man,” Richie says, throwing back the rest of his bourbon at the reminder. “We both know _I’ll_ be the one out buying a cannabis farm.”

Steve tips his head while swirling the ice in his glass, then hums unenthusiastic agreement a few seconds later.

Richie manages to forget the TiMER for a few minutes at a time while bullshitting with Steve, gossiping really, about the state of his own nebulous future. He came out, bluntly, on Twitter just after killing It, emboldened by the shrieking fight between Eddie and his ex-wife in the room next to him; he had felt freed for about thirty seconds, then terrified for three days, and now he’s settled into a vague ennui five months after, growing accustomed to all the strangers who are angry at him for being a fake, the strangers who are angry while pitying him, and the fact that they _all_ want him to know about it.

A lot of his actual management team, ever thirsty and money-hungry, surprised him by using it as an opportunity to use him rather than to fire him. Example A: Steve, who had known Richie was gay since an unfortunately weepy incident in a dive bar, promptly dumping a year-long plan of opportunities for good PR that he seemed to have just _ready_ in his fucking mailbox.

Richie looks up at the clock between a pair of liquor-filled shelves when it hits 11:58PM, gulping down dregs of bourbon while watching the seconds count up. He shoves a couple of ice-cubes in his mouth at 11:59, crunching hard, and nearly bites into his lip when the jingle plays cheerily from his wrist at the moment the clock hits midnight.

“Did you hear anyone else’s?” Richie asks after a few silent beats, dropping his eyes while tracing a whorl on the stained wood under his hand.

Steve glances widely around the bar, then leans out of his seat while presumably looking at the rest of the club. He hums low, then offers a tipsy mutter, “No?”

“Huh,” Richie says, chewing on his cheek for a few seconds before turning his wrist to look at the TiMER. “Maybe it’s broken – do they get old? I’ve had it since the nineties.”

Steve scoffs under his breath. “Or maybe your soul mate isn’t the type to hang out in a comedy bar at midnight on a Thursday after a Trashmouth show.”

“That’s a shame,” Richie says, reaching out and signaling to the bartender for another round. He wonders if it might be a driver, after he finally peels himself off the stool, then huffs weakly to himself at the idea of their disappointment. “Two sad sacks – we’d be perfect for each other. Could you drive me home?”

“I didn’t drive,” Steve says, leaning into the bar on his elbow with a painfully judgmental slant to his mouth. “But I’ll pay for your Lyft.”

Richie reaches out with the flat of a fist to shove at Steve’s shoulder. “Earned your bonus, bud.”

Steve rolls his eyes, pulling out his phone with a low mutter. It takes him a few scowling moments, but then he looks up while putting it face down at the bar. “Text me when you find out who got saddled with you,” he says, affable but also entirely serious, brows furrowing stern. “I’ll run a background check.”

Richie shakes his head, but doesn’t otherwise disagree; he wonders if he can scare them off with all the crap. He finishes his last drink slowly, swirling the bitterness in his mouth, then follows Steve out to the street into a waiting sedan where it turns out it isn’t the Lyft driver. He officially has no clue who it could be, at this point – he doesn’t have any plans tomorrow. He could, realistically, just not leave the house all day – he doesn’t even need to order out or check the mail.

Oh shit, what if it’s some kind of door-to-door salesperson… He totally deserves that, honestly, but he doesn’t know what they’d sell – globes? Atlases?

He forgoes turning the lights on when he shuffles into the house, grimacing at the stove telling him it’s coming up on 1AM, and doesn’t so much as get into bed as fall on top of it, kicking his jeans off onto the ground beside his blazer. He didn’t quite get drunk, just shy of it, but that’s thankfully enough for his brain to let him pass out rather than catastrophizing into the next morning about his door-to-door soul mate.

Richie doesn’t expect the shrill song of the doorbell; in fairness, he never expects it. He’s come to prefer alerts on his phone and never letting people know his address, which is something that he’s only gotten better at in the last few months.

So he doesn’t expect a doorbell. He expects it even less when it’s still dark out, but he stumbles up anyway, driven mostly by curiosity and the fact that it won’t stop, running his hands into his hair and wishing he had a bat. He doesn’t _think_ a murderer would go out of their way to ask to come in, but his experience with that is mostly with literal monsters and a firmly repressed experience on the other end, so maybe a murderer would – maybe it’s a tactic to get his guard down.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t remember the _real_ reason to avoid confronting the danger on the other side of the door until it comes rushing back to him like a smack up the side of the head when the jingle plays at the moment he tugs on the handle. He hastily slams the door back shut before he can even get a good look at the person on the steps, breathing hard and patting at nonexistent pockets like he’s going to call 911 and – and what? Report trespassing?

“Don’t throw up,” Richie whispers at the tile beneath his feet, somehow finding the mental wherewithal _right now_ to recognize his cleaning service isn’t due for a couple more days. “Do _not_ throw up.”

“You fuck,” a familiar voice snaps, joined by knuckles rapping sharply at the door.

“Wha – ? _Eddie_?!” Richie yelps, pulling the door back open to confirm with a peek that Eddie _fucking_ Kaspbrak is standing in his doorway. He opens the door further to blink down at him in disbelief, then looks out toward the street, lit by only the sparest hint of twilight; okay, so this is a… a surprisingly lucid, mundane dream, which he hasn’t lately had with Eddie. “Hey, I didn’t… uh, know it was you.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, hands twisting together bizarrely in front of him before dropping to fists at his sides. “Who else did you expect?”

“Well, uh, n-no one,” Richie stammers, leaning into the door handle while regarding Eddie, drawing his eyes up from Eddie’s clean white sneakers to his unbranded hoodie with the polo underneath. He inhales sharply when Eddie moves a half-step closer, shifting on his feet and forcing himself to look up. “Certainly not a traveling insurance salesman.”

Eddie answers with a familiar irritated noise, then reaches out with clear purpose, his hand wrapping warm around Richie’s wrist and turning it around for a look at the TiMER. “I should’ve expected the joke,” he says quietly, a smile growing visible at the corner of his mouth while he gently traces the device with his thumb; _shit_ , this is also the sort of dream it’s going to be misery to wake up from. “It is you.”

Richie finds himself caught in dark, deep eyes when Eddie looks up under his lashes. He takes a shallow breath, swallowing slightly, and feels entirely pulled in by the softness settling between them when he slowly leans down to press his lips soft against Eddie’s in a kiss. It’s not the usual fantasy perfection, a little wet and his glasses getting in the way, which is kind of – oh, _shit_. He squeaks and startles back into the door jamb, nearly falling over his feet onto his ass. “Holy shit – sorry, _sorry_! I’m so fucking sorry, I – ?!”

“Hey, Richie, it’s okay,” Eddie interrupts, eyes going wide and worried, stepping forward hastily while his hand drifts up Richie’s arm to squeeze at his elbow. “Don’t freak.”

Richie rolls his lips against his teeth to bite down, letting Eddie steer him through the door; he seems somehow completely unperturbed by the fact Richie kissed him. Unless, maybe he didn’t; he’s still a little unsure of reality. “What time is it?”

“Just after 4AM,” Eddie answers curtly, briefly releasing Richie to drag a couple of _suitcases_ in and shove them at a corner of the entryway.

Richie stares befuddled at the luggage for a few seconds before he drops his eyes away, incidentally catching on Eddie’s wrist, and swallows hard at the sight of the the TiMER; it’s one of the new ones, of course, softly glowing, sleeker, and with modern font. He reaches out, wanting to touch and _prove_ it’s real, only for Eddie to take his hand and use it to leverage him into turning around.

Eddie gradually pushes Richie further in the house with a pair of warm hands solid on his back. “Are you okay – you seem kind of… dazed? Are you stoned?”

“Feels like it, man,” Richie mutters, sinking down onto the sofa and shoving his fingertips under his glasses and over his eyes; the last few minutes – _hours_ have exhausted him by lurching between one extreme feeling to the next, but also: why is any time before noon even allowed? “I think I went to bed like three hours ago? I had a show last night.”

“You stayed out?” Eddie says, suddenly pulling out his phone with that little furrow between his brows. The screen lights up his face in a soft white, and fuck, is he really looking up Richie’s Twitter right now?

“It’s my job,” Richie says, rubbing down his cheeks with both hands and staring up fuzzily at Eddie over the frames of his glasses. He wants to kiss him again, longer, confirm on purpose that this is not just in his head. “I also got kind of… sloshed, as the kids say.”

“Shit,” Eddie mutters, swiping at the phone with color rising high in his cheeks, visible even in the dim light. He throws it across the sofa, where it bounces against a cushion, then falls with a thunk onto the hardwood. “Okay, fuck. So I should’ve waited a couple hours, but I – I didn’t want to miss it!”

“ _Eds_ ,” Richie leans forward, pressing his face into Eddie’s shirt while trying to tug him bodily onto on the sofa, feeling brave, then getting entirely surprised when Eddie eagerly goes along to the point he’s _straddling_ across Richie’s knees. He could almost start to think this is a dream again, if Eddie weren’t maybe just heavy enough that Richie’s got to shift his feet to comfortably hold him without pain spiking up his ankle. “You’re so cute. That makes no sense.”

“Shut up,” Eddie says, his hands palpably floating over Richie’s shoulders for a beat. He swallows hard, throat bobbing enough to be felt against Richie’s forehead. “Are… are you happy?”

“I am fucking _elated_ ,” Richie promises, slumping when Eddie’s hands drop, then rolling his neck when one squeezes solid and warm at his nape. “I just – I wasn’t –” He exhales a shaky breath, digging his forehead deeper into Eddie’s collarbone. “I – I’ve wanted it to be you since before I got the fucking thing, I swear, Ben as my witness.”

Eddie is worryingly quiet and still for a moment, then takes a loud, wobbly breath. “Yeah?”

“This is like ten kinds of fantasy, man,” Richie admits, feeling a little bit like his chest has opened up, exposing his insides along with thirty years of secrets. “I was so scared, Eds, especially when you told me not to visit.”

“I _already_ had tickets,” Eddie says, markedly defensive by the quick fire, if bewildering response, shifting in closer to Richie with a huddle down into a tight hug, warmly closing Richie’s chest back up with a squeeze. “You might’ve booked a later flight – it would’ve been a waste of money.”

“I definitely would’ve booked a later flight,” Richie says, like he hadn’t been ready to leave at the moment he asked. He swallows hard, turning his head against Eddie’s chest, “I – I love you, Eds, truly, but a redeye is beyond me.”

Eddie huffs unsteadily, rocking slightly while one of his hands shifts, so a thumb can rub softly across Richie’s temple. “I love you, too,” he whispers, muffled slightly when he presses his face into Richie’s hair. “I wish I – I should’ve gotten it with you. Back then.”

Richie freezes for a startled beat, thoughts skipping on repeat: _I love you, too; I love you, too; I love you, **too**. _

“Might not have changed anything,” he mumbles in a croak, pretending not to feel the burning in his eyes and instead thinking about Bev and Ben, both zeroed out and not knowing who for almost twenty-five years; of Bev specifically not remembering, not until It was trying to drown her in a nightmare.

“Fucking clown,” Eddie says, spitting the words, then inhaling a harsh, uneven breath. “Fuck.”

“Why did you get it?” Richie asks, reluctantly leaning out of the embrace, reaching up to take Eddie’s wrist and drag his thumb across the skin just under the zeroed-out TiMER. “Did you find a suitable ste _ri_ le environment?”

Eddie is quiet for a beat, then offers a grumbling sigh. “It was part of the divorce.”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Richie mutters, brows going up his forehead.

“And fucking _no_ ,” Eddie says, his voice dropping with a mix of irritation and embarrassment; an unpleasant combination that always makes Richie’s heart sink in sympathy. “I had to make them wipe it down like six times before I – I could work up to it. Who the fuck decided to have this shit in malls?”

“Cap _ital_ ism,” Richie sings quietly, looking up to catch Eddie’s eyes while twisting his hand to better catch onto Eddie’s fingers. “Were the lawyers there, too?”

“Everyone,” Eddie mutters, rolling his eyes away. He seems to focus on their joined hands, mouth twitching, and squeezes firmly at Richie’s hand with short jerk of his head. “Six of us packed into a tiny, unventilated little fucking room pretending to be a goddamn clinic.”

“Sucks,” Richie says, then grimaces and regrets it immediately; he doesn’t know what he _should_ say, but definitely something weightier, thoughtful enough to equal the fact Eddie was forced to do something so bullshit to satisfy his clingy _ex_. “You shouldn’t have had to do that.”

“It was… fucked up, yeah,” Eddie clears his throat, reaching down and taking Richie’s other hand, turning it over in his to look at the TiMER on _his_ wrist. “But I wanted to know, too.”

Richie swallows hard, glancing back and forth, blinking against the stinging in his eyes that worsens immediately at the sight of their TiMERs together; he is Eddie’s soul mate _– him,_ Richie Tozier _._ He swallows behind a shaky breath, then gives into a sappy impulse to turn and press his lips to the edge of Eddie’s TiMER.

“Like I – I said, I already had my ticket,” Eddie says, his voice tight, followed by an inhale that sounds a little wheezy, but it’s gone by his following exhale. “I was going to come out here even if she didn’t sign the papers.”

“At 4AM?” Richie asks, glancing pointedly to the bay of windows and the slowly creeping sun, the sky still barely a wash of blue-gray. “Eddie, you need to learn about this cool thing called _sleep_.”

“Fuck off, it was the first flight I saw pretty much exactly a month ago and I wasn’t really paying attention,” Eddie says, opening and closing his hand and making his wrist flex in Richie’s grip. “I _maybe_ thought it was in the afternoon. But that’s not the point, the point _is_ that it was… It was like… an ultimatum with myself.”

“To come out to LA?” Richie says, realizing absently now that’s half the Losers in the city. 

Eddie chuckles weakly, a little uneven and pitchy. “To come out to you.”

Richie feels himself go still for a beat, words barely processing, and feels like he must somehow be interpreting them wrong. “Uh,” he intones, eyes going wide while he looks up at Eddie, trying to clear his throat, but his voice still comes out tight. “Really?”

“Are you serious?” Eddie says, heavy brow furrowing while his mouth twists with an unfamiliar grimace. “After our literal TiMERs go off?”

“Yeah, but that’s like…” Richie shrugs weakly, shifting his legs and failing to distract himself with the middling ache from the weight, because really that just emphasizes how Eddie is _here_ literally on top of him and actually saying he – “ _Before_ you got the TiMER?”

Eddie’s hands pull from Richie’s lax grip to curve firmly against his jaw. “ _Yes_.”

“I mean,” Richie swallows, suffering a miserable thought that Eddie could be saying all this to make him feel better. “Big, if true.”

“Richie,” Eddie says, jaw abruptly angling forward and lips pressing against Richie’s for a brief, solid second. He’s exhales hard when he pulls back, big eyes a little wild. “Since before _you_ got your TiMER.”

Richie swallows hard as the stinging in his eyes finally refuses to be held back, tentatively lifting his hands to palm at Eddie’s waist, startlingly firm underneath his dorky polo. He laughs weakly, then ducks his head to lean forward again and press his face into Eddie’s shirt; he’s got him in his _lap_ , solid and warm, and really, really fucking nice, and he finds himself taking a slightly choked breath.

“Are you crying?” Eddie says, his thumbs stroking soothingly down both sides of Richie’s neck in tandem.

“No,” Richie lies, wiping his face a little on Eddie’s shirt just to hear that badly smothered disgust at the mere _idea_ of mucus.

“I wasn’t going to tell you this,” Eddie says, exhaling a slow breath, his chest shrinking beneath Richie’s cheek by gradual measures. “Not right away, because it’s going to make your giant head even bigger, but I – ” He pauses, fingers sliding a few times through Richie’s hair. “I actually told Myra part of why I was leaving was you, how… how I’ve felt since basically we were kids, and, uh, that’s why she said that she’d sign the papers if I got it. I think she was trying to – to make me look irrational, but then the TiMER said today, when I was going to see you again, then you texted me right _after…_ ” He huffs out a soft laugh. “It was finally enough for her.”

Richie chews his lip for a beat, feeling a grin pulling against the effort; apparently, he’s a real life home wrecker – if only he had maybe _known_ about it. “And then you were like: ‘oh, I was finalizing my divorce’.”

“I just said I _was_!” Eddie defends sharply, though his voice thins out a little toward the end.

“Dude,” Richie says, leaning back and looking up, shaking Eddie until he gets visibly annoyed. “I freaked – would’ve been cool if you said that included a _TiMER_ , so we both fucking knew.”

Eddie takes a deep breath, then his eyes drop while his expression twists in a grimace. “Shit, I didn’t – ” He presses his lips briefly together into a white line, then squeezes at Richie’s arms with a sullen eye roll. “You’re right, okay? I’m sorry. But how would _I_ know you’d get so miserable and _–_ and _drunk_ at the idea of meeting your soul mate?”

“How was I supposed to fall in love with someone else?” Richie bursts out, confessing the last eighteen or so hours of anxiety, or alternatively the last twenty-eight years, in a surprisingly easy breath. He spreads his arms in an exaggerated bewilderment, widening his eyes up at Eddie, who looks somewhere between pleased and annoyed. “I don’t even know how to do that – even my jerk off fantasies have been the same for like thirty years!”

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie says, leaning back and away to sit on Richie’s knees with a flat sort of smile.

“Whatever, you basically just admitted the same thing,” Richie says, still trying to process that part of Eddie’s whole… _confession_ ; he can hardly believe it, wants to go back in time and shake himself, but what he said earlier is still true – it might not have even mattered. “Which is _nuts_ , but totally explains your sham marriage.”

“Shut up,” Eddie says, shoving hard at Richie’s sternum until he’s sitting up with his head against the back cushion. “I don’t think about shit when I jerk off. I just do it.”

“That is the saddest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Richie says, then carefully wets his lips, looking over his frames while an optimistic thrill strikes through him. “…Do you need lessons?”

Eddie narrows his eyes back, then slowly raises an eyebrow while the corner of his mouth twitches. “Really?”

“I’m fucking bushed, Eds,” Richie whines, throwing his hands up again before letting them fall heavily back onto the cushions, absently hoping Eddie doesn’t notice the resulting puff of dust. “My dick wants to touch your dick, but the rest of my body wants to nap. My game is _off_.”

“ _Game_ ,” Eddie snorts quietly, then cracks up for a startling moment, before tilting to drop his head to Richie’s shoulder with a sigh. “Yeah… _yeah_ , I guess I haven’t slept since this morning. Yesterday morning.”

“Coolio,” Richie says, sliding his hands up Eddie’s flat chest and groping a little because he can, but mostly for how it makes Eddie laugh again, then pushing gently in a hint. “Let’s go pass out and then touch dicks.”

“I hate you,” Eddie laments, shoving hard at Richie’s shoulder while sliding off his lap in a way that _probably_ wasn’t supposed to be sensual. “I can _not_ believe I wanted this.”

“Admit it, I wore you down, Eds,” Richie says, ignoring the frankly mortifying cracking of his knees while standing. He indulgently slides one arm around Eddie’s shoulders while directing him down the hall, using the other hand to gesture slow and flat in front of them. “Like a glacier.”

Eddie glances incredulously sideways, stopping them mid-step while his mouth twists with a bemused grin. “What does – are you fucking global warming now?”

Richie stares back for a beat, something expanding wide and painful in his chest; he slowly drops his head, reaching up to curve his fingers around the square of Eddie’s jaw and pausing, just enough for him to pull away, before pressing their mouths together. He parts his lips slightly, only to be immediately thrilled when Eddie reciprocates with a sigh and a harsh tug at his shirt, deepening the kiss before Richie can even try, licking into his mouth in a searing move before pulling back with a flick of his lashes and a smirk.

“Okay, no,” Richie mumbles, nudging Eddie gently toward his bedroom door while reaching out to swing it further open with his knuckles. “It’s you – you’re warming my global.”

Eddie snorts while rolling his lips together, stepping out from under Richie’s arm once inside the door. He’s quiet a few seconds, glancing from wall to wall with a particularly assessing slant to his mouth, then reaches up to rub up nervously at his scar. “You know, uh, I don’t know if I’m – ”

“You wake me up before the sun, you have to cuddle me,” Richie interrupts, burying away a skittish little thrum of anxiety at his center. He slumps down onto the mattress, straightening the duvet from where it’s tangled on the other side, and gestures weakly for Eddie to take the emptied space before drawing his hand back into his side. “I mean, if you want.”

“Uh, yeah,” Eddie says, shifting oddly forward and back on his feet. “I _want –_ that’s what I’ve been saying. I just – ” He exhales with a grimace and an eye roll, looking at the bed, then turning his head to toward Richie with a drag of his teeth over his lip. “Sure, yeah.”

“If you don’t – ”

“Shut the fuck up, Richie,” Eddie snaps, ripping his jacket off in a jerky motion and throwing it in the corner like some kind of madman; _okay_ , so he’s clearly worked up about something if he’s letting his clothes touch an uninspected floor. “But you can’t say shit, okay? I was in your _lap_ and then you were all over me – it’s a normal fucking reaction.”

Richie feels his jaw drop open a little at the epiphany hits with a particularly strong jolt between his legs. “ _Oh_ ,” He laughs weakly, because sure he’d gotten a hint of chub on the sofa, how could he fucking not, but now… It’s definitely more than a hint. “Oh, right. Cute.”

Eddie ducks his head with a scoff, shoving his shoes off and going for his belt with more fitful motions.

Richie tries not to gawk _too_ much, but that goes out the window when he catches the visible swell in Eddie’s boxer briefs, not to mention a peek of flat stomach that confirms him being fit as fuck was not just some grey-water-induced fever dream. “Fuck, look at that tight tummy – ”

“Not helping, jackass,” Eddie says, but then he takes his undershirt off, baring it all completely unnecessarily, a pink flush startlingly evident up his exposed chest and into his shoulders.

“Not trying to,” Richie says, fatigue completely ceding to arousal while he reaches out to encourage Eddie closer onto the bed. “What kind of soul mate would let Eddie Kaspbrak suffer blue balls.”

Eddie sputters something under his breath, mercifully following the gesture, only to promptly shove Richie onto his back to leer over him. “What happened to tired?”

“Dick is refusing to nap,” Richie says, feeling his face flush hot while he huffs under his breath, dropping his head back onto the pillow when it breaks into a louder crack of laughter. “Dick. That’s me.”

“Stop laughing at yourself, you bigheaded fuck,” Eddie says, leaning over Richie to start hounding his bedside table like he owns the place; his confidence is reassuring, acting as if he’s already been here forever, fussing over Richie’s lack of organization and problem with leaving shit where it drops. “Is this – ? Of course, you have lube just _out_.”

“Only jerk off with the best,” Richie says, angling his knee out and making searing contact with the inside of a muscled thigh. “That’s lesson one, Eds.”

Eddie tilts his head, glancing pointedly up and down, then raises a brow while he sits back on his haunches next to Richie’s hip. “Yeah, I can tell you’re a real expert with this starfish technique.”

Richie grins back wide and a little forced; he wants to touch Eddie so bad, palm around the enticingly visible swell in those sinful little boxer briefs, but he’s also a little scared that if he does, then everything will shatter into a thousand little pieces and he’ll wake up. “I have to assess your skill.”

Eddie snickers almost immediately, then leans down as it drops off to speak near Richie’s ear. “Keep going, and I’m going to send you a fucking bill.”

Richie turns his head, mostly just to pretend outrage, only to hum in surprise when Eddie swiftly uses the angle to kiss him. He reaches out then, still a little hesitant, to frame his hands across Eddie’s hips and pull him on top of him with a hum into his mouth. He can’t quite believe this is really happening; the dreams that he’s so often had blending into the mounting grey-blue twilight of his room to make it seem all the more fantasy.

Eddie, evidently, has remarkably fewer reservations, judging by the way his fingers start digging hotly under the hem of Richie’s boxers to get them down.

“Shit,” Richie gasps, rolling his hips upward with a groan and peeking down, only to look straight back up to the ceiling with a choke. Alright, so he can’t watch Eddie’s hands on him, soft glow of the zeroed TiMER at the wrist, cannot see Eddie’s unsurprisingly pretty cock flushed and hard next to his own, unless he wants to embarrass himself in less than a minute. It’s not going quite the way he has always dreamed; he’s being way, _way_ less suave and cool about it.

“Fuck, Rich,” Eddie says, rocking down against Richie while his hands now drift to feel up under his shirt, thankfully seeming unaware of his total lack of chill. “I’ve thought about this since Derry,” he says, sitting up a few seconds, shoving his underwear further down off his legs in a shimmy that has to be illegal in at least four states. “Being in the room next to you was torture.”

Richie chuckles faintly, a little distracted while kicking off his boxers and trying not to come untouched. “But you… you _don’t_ think about anything when jerking off?”

“So?” Eddie grumbles, his typical pinched frown even cuter while his face is flushing a dark pink. He gestures aggressively with the lube, waving the bottle in an exaggerated furor before popping the cap. “It’s disrespectful or – or something. I don’t fucking know.”

“Man,” Richie says, swallowing hard while sliding his hands up Eddie’s naked torso with a deliberately appreciative sweep of his eyes. “I’ve been disrespecting you so hard, Eds.”

Eddie huffs quietly, visibly biting back a smile when he drops his head. “Gross.”

Richie grins against the next kiss, then moans when Eddie wraps a slick, warm hand around his dick. He slides one of his hands up Eddie’s back and flat across his shoulder, biting into his mouth while heat spreads across every inch of his skin. His other hand lands across Eddie’s ass, squeezing hard, and suffers heat flaring across his neck when Eddie groans something that sounds _a lot_ like his name into his mouth.

He feels almost like a fucking teenager, impatient and on a hair-trigger, and knows he’s not going to last long. The way Eddie rolls his hips, dropping a knee between Richie’s to press in even closer doesn’t help the matter, both of them rutting eagerly as Eddie’s fingers start tugging both of them with even strokes. It’s not practiced necessarily, but definitely seems experienced, which is a conversation for when Richie can think about anything but the perfect slick pressure that is Eddie’s cock sliding up against his own.

“Fuck,” Richie gasps, tightening his grip over Eddie’s ass and rocking upward more desperately while sparks burn straight up his spine. “ _Eds_.”

Eddie hums low and uneven, not quite answering, his mouth sucking hotly under Richie’s jaw.

Richie jerks his hips when the feeling peaks, squeezing his eyes shut with a low, throaty groan and biting his lip while Eddie’s guides him through to hypersensitivity. He allows himself a single satisfied, shivery breath before eagerly reaching down, wrapping his hand around Eddie’s now neglected cock, leaking precome and flushed so pretty that Richie wonders if he might defy his exhaustion and his age to get hard again, until he’s shaking against Richie and spilling out hot across his stomach with the hottest noise that Richie’s ever heard.

Eddie proceeds to shudder and mumble appreciative noises into Richie’s neck for a few seconds, then tragically rolls off with another equally unintelligible mutter. His hand starts stroking at Richie’s hip, though, so whatever he’s saying is _probably_ nice.

“Naturally gifted,” Richie says, because he’s starting to feel a little anxious despite his mind still fuzzy around the edges. “I’m willing to comp all future lessons. You’re go – gonna go straight to the pros, kid.”

Eddie exhales something markedly derisive, now weakly backhanding Richie across his exposed stomach.

Richie grabs Eddie’s hand before it can be pulled away, peeking down for a few seconds at the TiMER while softly thumbing across the face of it, thinking how the sight is never going to get old. He hums a low breath, then looks over to stare across the planes of Eddie’s face in the rising sun; he’s _so_ fucking pretty, lashes dark and lips bruised red, half open while he breathes at the ceiling. It’s totally unreal that Richie gets to see him like this at all, let alone be the one who made it happen.

“I need to clean up,” Eddie mutters, pulling away and sitting up with a sharp breath, which times it at about a solid minute of more of afterglow than expected. He does linger a bit longer to look over to Richie, eyes soft and warm, at least until they drop to abruptly cast judgment at his chest. “I can’t believe I somehow got off while you were wearing that.”

Richie looks down with a blink, raising an eyebrow back at Rocko’s sullied face awkwardly grinning up at him. “Looks like he was into it.”

Eddie exhales an exasperated huff, shaking his head while pushing off the bed to move around toward the en suite.

Richie tugs the dirty shirt over his head, grin somehow growing wider while he listens to Eddie mutter at the skylight thoughtfully, flicking on a light and turning on the water in the sink. He doesn’t know what Eddie was planning to do out here before the TiMER, if he booked a hotel or made some kind of arrangement, but Richie hopes he just stays – he wants nothing more than to just listen to Eddie make mundane noise in his too-quiet house forever.

“Jesus fuck, is this a literal bottle of Jack Daniels in your bathroom?”

Richie blinks down at the shirt in his hands, then cracks up while balling it up to throw toward the, usually forgotten, hamper – the whiskey’s been in there so long he kind of forgot that was a joke. He makes his way into the bathroom, squinting briefly against the light. “I am…” He makes a show of wiping at a tear, leaning hard into Eddie and sliding an arm across his shoulders. “So proud of you for getting that reference.”

“I don’t live in a cave,” Eddie snaps, putting the bottle back where it belongs behind the toothbrush holder. “How many people have you even gotten a laugh out of that with?”

“Well, counting you – ”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Don’t.”

“One,” Richie admits, shrugging slightly, then gesturing cyclically with the hand over Eddie’s shoulder to include the general space around them. “People don’t really get this far into the house.”

Eddie stares sidelong for a beat, lips briefly pressing into a thin line, then his eyes slide back to the whiskey. “So this is here for you to laugh at your own fucking joke?”

Richie clicks his tongue, dropping his arm further to drape over Eddie’s chest and hugging him in close, looking up to make eye contact with him in the mirror. “Be real, Spaghetti,” he says, rocking them both back and forth. “I know you’re into it; we’re – ” he drops his voice to a hoarse whisper, “ _Soul mates_.”

Eddie’s eyes roll while he exhales an _adorably_ defeated sigh.

**Author's Note:**

> How did they all survive? Good question. _Great_ question. 
> 
> No idea.
> 
> All I know is that, when they were teenagers, Eddie thought he was coming down with a sudden, terrible flu for about an hour while half his friends psyched themselves up to get TiMERs, until he suddenly felt fine again when Richie's came up blank; he refused to acknowledge any correlation. 
> 
> I can also be found on twitter [ @ ezlebe](https://twitter.com/ezlebe?lang=en)


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